When I talk to people in the north of Canada about the disproportionate impact of climate on their communities, I’m able to talk about the experience of my family from low-lying islands. They’re experiencing much more intense hurricane and typhoon seasons. I also understand that communities of colour and racialized communities are the ones that are impacted the worst and first by climate change. I understand the urgency of helping those communities.

I ran as MP for the Green Party in Toronto Centre in the 2019 by-election. When you’re running in a community that has some of the highest rates of unemployment; people living under the poverty line, including children; opioid addiction and poisonings, you really understand that if people are preoccupied with meeting their basic needs, they have very little bandwidth to be allies on the climate emergency. We’re not going to get the critical mass of sustained consistent public pressure that we need on our political leadership to get the change that we need if we don’t create more allies. And we’re not going to create more allies if those people are too distracted by meeting their basic needs.

If people are preoccupied with meeting their basic needs, they have very little bandwidth to be allies on the climate emergency.

This is why the Green Party also talks about things like a guaranteed liveable income, extension to the greatest degree possible of universal social programs – like post-secondary education, pharmacare, dental care, mental health care – exactly because we know that these are the building blocks that are going to create the climate warriors of the future.

As Canadians with an economy that has been centred on fossil fuels, many hard-hit communities don’t necessarily buy the promise of green jobs. It’s helpful for me to have a brother who comes from working on the oil rigs in the Prairies. When people know that it’s personal, they believe you when you tell them that this matters to you – I don’t want to see your community displaced, I want to make sure that you have jobs that can provide for you and your family.

As Canadians with an economy that has been centred on fossil fuels, many hard-hit communities don’t necessarily buy the promise of green jobs.

I come from a community that people understand has been historically marginalized, that has suffered from systemic discrimination, that has had a lot of socio-economic struggles. I know there’s no climate justice without social justice.

Ten years from now I see a society where we have finally completed our social safety net, so that when people are making the transition away from carbon-intensive industries, they can do it with confidence, knowing that they’ll be taken care of and their families and loved ones will be taken care of.

Canada has all the other elements that it needs: we are wealthy, we have the intellectual capital, we’re going to be making unprecedented investments into our economy. We just need that compelling vision about where we can get to and why it’s such a better place than where we are now.

This article has been adapted from a Q&A between Corporate Knights and Annamie Paul. We spoke with Paul about how diverse communities have frequently been sidelined in the climate conversation and how to flip the script to meaningfully engage all Canadians in the transition to a thriving, climate-neutral economy. This article is part of a series of stories from our Winter Issue cover package: What it will take for us to get the climate message before it’s too late.

Annamie Paul is the leader of the Green Party of Canada. She is the first Black Canadian and first Jewish woman to be elected leader of a major federal party in Canada. Paul is a human rights lawyer who most recently worked as the Brussels director for Crisis Action.

The post Beyond green: The secret to creating climate allies appeared first on Corporate Knights.

A significant body of research has made clear the correlation between a diverse senior management team and improved company performance. McKinsey’s latest diversity study, released this spring, found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity were 36% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile. A 2018 Deloitte report found that inclusive companies also outperform on customer satisfaction (+39%), productivity (+22%) and turnover (-22%). Regardless of the evidence, however, moving the dial on corporate diversity, equity and inclusion is complicated and slow going.

Corporate Knights analysis of 68 Toronto Stock Exchange companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue found that just eight had at least 10% racial diversity on both their boards and senior executive teams, including Canadian Solar Inc., BlackBerry Limited and Toronto-Dominion Bank (see table below for the top 10). More than a third (37%) of large publicly traded companies in Canada did not have a single racially diverse board member or senior executive. It’s a startling figure, considering that 27% of Canada’s population is racially diverse, with 5% of that being Indigenous.

A number of companies are scrambling to address racial inequities by hiring a chief diversity officer (CDO) or diversity and inclusion (D&I) manager. But between the politics, bureaucracy, fiefdoms and silos, one CDO or D&I manager – with little to no budget, limited staff and a reporting line that is levels down from the CEO – is hardly going to be heard, let alone redesign a system to change ingrained beliefs and power structures.

The ways in which systemic racism and bias are deeply rooted within corporations are not always easily identified or understood. In addition to Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) being passed over for promotions more often and hired at levels far lower than their qualifications, in recent months racialized Canadians have publicly shared their experiences of microaggression in the workplace. I myself have had a C-suite executive assume that I had completed my doctorate degree at an Indian university, even though I’m Canadian. I was also told, by the same female executive, that there are not enough qualified women of colour. Meanwhile, there are more racialized professional women in Toronto than non-racialized professional women, yet non-racialized women still outnumber racialized women in corporate leadership roles 12 to 1, according to Ryerson University’s 2020 Diversity Institute study, Diversity Leads.

These types of comments may seem harmless; however, research indicates they have a powerful impact. Between 2016 and 2018, Catalyst, in association with Ascend Canada, surveyed men and women who identify as Black, East Asian or South Asian. The study found that people of colour carry an extra emotional burden at work that’s detrimental to their health and often causes them to contemplate quitting.

How can companies do better?

Making charitable contributions to organizations committed to serving diverse groups, supporting events that celebrate our vibrant and diverse communities, making pledges to increase board diversity, and announcing targets to increase the number of racialized employees by a specific percentage by a certain date – these are important and good starting points. However, we cannot brush off the hard, roll-up-your-sleeves, long-term work of creating a diverse workplace where all employees can bring their full selves to work, be engaged and productive, and feel that they are valued, supported and belong.

Map the right metrics

What types of data, metrics, actions and organizational structures enable us to create equitable and inclusive workplaces? First, collect data on gender, race, ethnicity, age and disability at each job level and analyze for hiring, promotions, terminations and departures. Pay data is already being collected; use this data to analyze salary gaps within and between jobs by gender, race, ethnicity, age and disability. In addition, consider conducting surveys that capture employees’ experiences and views on compensation, promotions, assignments, mentoring and performance reviews. Questions such as “Do you feel that people see you as a member of a racial group rather than a team member?” or “Do you feel that you have to prove yourself repeatedly to get the same recognition as your colleagues?” can provide answers about where bias occurs most often and what systems need to be improved.

Distribute skill-building

Every workplace has high-profile assignments that are career-enhancing and low-profile assignments that benefit an organization but not the individual’s career. Research indicates that racialized professionals are more often assigned low-profile work. Distributing high-profile and low-profile work equitably lets you tap into the full potential of your team and support individuals’ professional development goals as well as the team’s goals. Ask a junior colleague to chair team meetings and manage the agenda to create space for more dialogue and different perspectives. Diversity at the top can occur only when diverse employees at all levels of the organization have access to assignments that let them take risks and develop new skills.

Create belonging

To identify systemic issues in the workplace, we have to take steps to understand racialized people’s experiences in those spaces and use that knowledge to make changes that foster belonging. Pay attention to how biases show up in meetings and work proactively to address them. Keep track of the composition of the meetings – who speaks, who doesn’t. Has everyone had the opportunity to contribute? Sometimes before meetings I ask colleagues who are quieter if I can call on them. I want to ensure they have space to contribute without making them feel uncomfortable. Every time I’ve done this, the person has welcomed the opportunity to contribute and appreciated the space created for them.
Also, keep track of who gets credit for ideas versus who originated them and ensure that everyone with a part to play is at meetings. We can all recall a time when our ideas and work were credited to someone else, but racialized people experience this more frequently, racialized women in particular.

Go beyond HR

Beyond data and metrics, we need to acknowledge that the world is changing quickly and question whether traditional organizational structures enable the corporation to address emerging business priorities. In many conversations with racialized peers throughout my career, I have heard frustrations about not feeling heard by HR, feeling that HR was “on the side of the corporation, not employees.” Human resources departments are set up to manage risk, an important and necessary function; however, they may not be the right department to advance the diversity, inclusion and belonging agenda. It’s unrealistic to expect employees to see HR, the department that terminates employees, as also the department responsible for creating an equitable, engaging and inclusive workplace. If new ways of conducting business are to emerge, so too must new organizational reporting lines.

Chief diversity officers

Roughly half of S&P 500 companies now have chief diversity officers, according to The Wall Street Journal, which found that while demand for CDOs is high, so is turnover, with many CDOs leaving because of “a lack of resources, unrealistic expectations and inadequate support from senior executives.” Either the CDO must be empowered by the organization to make the systemic change it’s seeking or, as in the case of Neilsen’s David Kenny, the CEO should consider also taking on the CDO role.

Regardless, as corporations come face to face with disruption, leaders need to really listen to their teams, be willing to make the necessary changes, conduct themselves with compassion and put their people first. Diverse voices must actually be heard. This requires listening without preconceived notions, which sounds easy, but it requires empathy and a culture that truly values open communication.

We are at a moment in time when corporations are faced with an overwhelming demand for change. We have an opportunity to ensure that diversity flourishes throughout companies and to create a culture of belonging. As Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said [and] what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” In the corporations of the future, racialized employees must feel that they are included and that they belong.

The post How to fix corporate Canada’s trickle-down approach to diversity appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“It was the first of what would be most of the rest of my educational and professional career being one of the only minorities. I guess I learned how to deal with that early, and I see that as a positive,” Jackson says.

In high school, she applied for a summer program that pushed underrepresented minorities into science. There she listened to a young chemical engineer discuss her job designing a polymer used to make windshield glass shatterproof. “I remember the moment … I could see [engineering] applied to real life in a way that, in this particular case, actually helped save lives,” she says.

After getting a degree in chemical engineering from Yale and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon, Jackson’s love of teamwork and her impatience with solitary research jobs led her away from academia to a career in management consulting. A decade later she joined Capital One in Washington, D.C., first as senior director, then as vice-president. In 2018, she moved to Toronto to become president of Capital One Canada, becoming one of the only women – and even rarer, one of the only Black women – running a large Canadian corporation.

Despite rising to the top of the corporate world, Jackson says that being both Black and a woman has meant that she’s often been underestimated, passed over and excluded – and once even mistaken for waitstaff at a corporate event. “We’ve always been taught that we need to do twice as much work and work twice as hard to get the same things.”

Jackson says her science background comes in handy in the numbers-obsessed financial services industry and has also helped her build common ground, even when race and gender made her an outsider. “Ultimately, we have more in common than we have differences, even if that’s not always apparent. Sometimes it takes more conversation or personal exposure to get to that point,” she says.

With Jackson at the helm, Capital One Canada has tried to support young women of colour by sponsoring the annual Black Girl Magic Summit, which engages young women on entrepreneurship, financial and personal wellness, and money management.

Jackson’s advice to corporate leaders: “Ensure there’s a diversity plan. Be mindful of bias in our recruiting and development process, develop meaningful promotion and performance reviews. And then lead with empathy.”

Wes Hall

Founder of Kingsdale Advisors and the BlackNorth Initiative

Wes Hall learned early how to make it on his own. When he was 13, his mother packed all his things into a straw bag and kicked him out of their home, a tin shack in rural Jamaica. Hall earned money “selling peanuts on the street,” paying for his own food, clothing and school expenses, before moving to Canada to live with his father at 16.

Years later, that same determination propelled him to leave his job at the investor services firm Georgeson to start Kingsdale Advisors, a company dedicated to helping activist investors effect change within public companies. Working in corporate Canada, Hall says that he was never invited into any boardrooms, so he channelled his entrepreneurial drive and founded his own firm. “I wanted to create something … and control my own destiny,” he says.

He soon became one of Bay Street’s most powerful brokers, but he and his family continued to experience systemic anti-Black racism. After the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May, Hall felt compelled to write an op-ed in The Globe and Mail. He wrote of seeing Floyd when he looked in the mirror and called for the dismantling of systemic anti-Black racism. Numerous business leaders, including CIBC CEO Victor Dodig, reached out to him after reading the piece, asking how they could help.

With their support, Hall launched the BlackNorth Initiative, which urges businesses to support diversity, inclusion and the Black community. Their pledge was signed by more than 300 Canadian CEOs of companies representing a market cap of more than $1 trillion, including Capital One Canada’s Jennifer Jackson. The signatories commit to hiring at least 5% of their student workforce from the Black community and ensuring that 3.5% of board and executive positions are held by Black people by 2025.

Hall’s advice to racialized professionals: “If you’re stuck in [a] position for a sustained period of time and you’re an ambitious person, leave. Look at other companies that have a better track record in promoting racial diversity, even if you have to get less money and work your way up, because at least they’ll give you an opportunity.”

Michael Lee-Chin

Founder of Portland Holdings

In the late 1970s, Michael Lee-Chin drove 120 kilometres every day to his job in Tillsonburg, a small town in southern Ontario whose sweltering tobacco fields were immortalized in an eponymous song by Stompin’ Tom Connors. He had received only three job offers after returning to Canada, where he studied civil engineering at McMaster University, from an engineering job in Jamaica, where he was born and raised. The offers were all outside his intended field: long-haul truck driver, soap salesman and financial advisor. It was accepting the third that brought him to Tillsonburg and the world of finance.

As an advisor, Lee-Chin would spend his days cold-calling potential clients. If lucky, he was invited to their homes. “I was so excited that someone would really say yes to me and give me the opportunity to come and present,” he says. “I would say to myself while in the middle of the presentation at the kitchen table, ‘What’s the highest value I can give this family here tonight?’ And the answer kept coming back to me: make them wealthy.”

This led to another question: how?

He devised a formula for wealth creation: all wealthy people own a few high-quality businesses in long-term growth industries they deeply understand. They spend money prudently and view wealth through a long-term, intergenerational lens. Applying the formula to himself, he snapped up financial-services firms and ballooned their assets under management. The CEO of Portland Holdings and chair of the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica now has a personal net worth pegged at $1.5 billion. The philanthropist’s donations also helped found the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management’s Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship.

Lee-Chin notes that despite his impressive career, which includes being one of the few Canadians on the Forbes billionaire list, he’s never been invited to sit on a corporate board. “I can’t attribute it to anything other than that I must be less attractive than the worst board member in all the Canadian companies,” he jokes.

His approach to racism during his early career was shaped by a young man’s naiveté. Growing up in Jamaica to Black and Chinese-Jamaican parents, Lee-Chin says he never experienced racism and entered Canada colour-blind. “Had I been overthinking [colour] right out of the door I would have said to myself, ‘There’s no way I, as a Black man, should go and cold call in rural Ontario, where whenever they see Black people, they’re picking tobacco, not giving financial advice.’”

When asked how to fight systemic racism, Lee-Chin cited Newton’s law of inertia: an object will remain at rest unless an external force pushes it into motion. Similarly, he says, corporate Canada will remain complacent unless outsiders – be they consumers, activist investors or policy-makers – force it to change.

Tracy Miller

Senior vice-president of CP Rail

Long before Tracy Miller became a senior vice-president at CP Rail, he studied mathematics at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was scouted by a Chicago rail company.

Miller says his “lifestyle growing up as a young Black man [in Tennessee] and all the things that you deal with, mixed with this mathematical, analytical way of thinking,” readied him for a 25-year career in the sector. He says understanding the challenges of being one of the few Black executives in corporate America, and now corporate Canada, requires focusing on the words “one of the few.”

“You worry about a lot of different variables that come into play when there’s no one else around that’s like you. You feel like you have to be stronger than normal and at least twice as good sometimes to get some of the recognition that you deserve,” he says, echoing Jennifer Jackson’s sentiment.

In April 2019, Miller filed a suit against a former employer, alleging that racial discrimination had led to his being passed over for promotions five times since 2015, despite his excellent employee record and his reputation among his peers. He left to join CP as VP of corporate risk in March 2019.

Miller, like Hall, advises emerging Black leaders to find inclusive companies that value their talent: “Remain hopeful. Be persistent and be realistic.”

He adds, “I think there are a lot of young Black leaders who would excel if they were given an opportunity.”

The post Leading while Black appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Until recently, that’s how many may have imagined anti-Black racism in business: isolated acts of discrimination performed by a prejudiced few. But the death of George Floyd – an unarmed 46-year-old Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer onMay 25 – and the widespread protests that have erupted globally in response are forcing Canada’s business community to rethink racism.

In the weeks since Floyd’s death, businesses around the world have been scrambling to make diversity pledges. On June 8, the Financial Times reported that major corporations had recently donated more than $450 million to American civil rights groups. Last month, the Business Council of Canada had over 130 CEOs sign a statement denouncing all forms of racism. But anti-racism advocates say corporations will need to go beyond words and donations, particularly since research reveals that systemic racism in offices and executive suites isn’t a deviation from the norm – it is the norm.

A study to be released next month by Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute analyzed the diversity of companies in Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Toronto in 2019. Of 1,639 board members from 178 corporations, they found only 13 Black board members (0.79%), while white members held 1,483 spots (91%), and other racialized members held 61 spots (the institute was unable to classify some members). To put that in context, almost a tenth of Toronto is Black, while Black people make up 3.5% of Canada’s population, according to the most recent census.

Corporate Knights did its own count. After analyzing S&P/TSX 60 companies, we found that only six of the 799 senior executives and only four of the 686 board members at all 60 companies were Black. That’s less than 1%.

How Canadian companies are responding

Corporate Knights reached out to S&P/TSX 60 companies for comment. Of the 60 firms, the only companies that had Black leaders in their boardrooms or showcased on their websites’ leadership pages at the executive level were CIBC, CP Rail, Brookfield Asset Management, CGI Inc., TD Bank, Emera Inc. and Enbridge. (Corporate Knights restricted its executive count to those featured on companies’ leadership webpages. For example, two of Gildan’s VPs are Black but were excluded from our count because of this criteria.)

Of the companies that had no Black representation at the board or executive level, Restaurant Brands International (RBI) – which owns such companies as Tim Hortons and Burger King – acknowledged that change was needed. “We absolutely agree that we need more gender and racial diversity within our board and leadership teams,” said an RBI representative. To ensure there is “a permanent diversity shift that permeates our culture,”this week RBI’s CEO, José Cil, committed to ensuring that at least 50% of final-round candidates interviewing for roles at RBI offices will be from “demonstrably diverse backgrounds, including race.”

Suncor says it’s reviewing its inclusion and diversity strategy, which currently focuses on women, Indigenous peoples and the LGBT+ community, to ensure a more active involvement of Black and racialized communities.

A number of companies said that they have established diversity and inclusion (DC&I) councils, including Canadian Tire, Bell, BMO, Bausch Health, Agnico Eagle, Telus and Magna International. Magna stated that its DC&I council is “aligning with our talent review process to ensure we have broader visibility and opportunity to increase our diversity in leadership roles.”

Some corporations also highlighted their financial support for the cause: BMO donated $1 million to a number of social and racial justice groups while Canadian Tire donated $800,000 to various Black organizations. Canopy Growth noted it has been a longtime supporter of Cage-Free Cannabis (which provides legal services to communities of colour that have been disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs).

Canopy Growth says it’s also “rolling out a number of D&I [diversity and inclusion] initiatives, including benchmarking diversity and publicly reporting on our progress.”

Fortis Inc. said that while there are no Black executives in its holding company, several of its subsidiaries have Black executives and directors. Notably, FortisTCI recently appointed Ruth Forbes, a Black woman and current VP of corporate services, as its incoming president and CEO.

Teck Resources said that it considers diversity in the selection criteria for new board members and senior management team appointments and that “4 out of 12, or 33%, of directors on Teck’s board are visible minorities.”

Telus and Loblaw have both stated that 18% of their executives identify as “visible minorities”. Like most companies%, Loblaw acknowledged that it didn’t “break those numbers down further.”

Telus, which has been named one of the Best Diversity Employers in Canada by Mediacorp nearly a dozen times, told Corporate Knights, “We are committed to increasing the presence of underrepresented groups across key areas of our organization, including our Board.” Telus shared no specific targets.

Push for concrete corporate commitments

Wes Hall, executive chairman of Kingsdale Advisors, finds Corporate Knights’ TSX 60 data unsurprising. “We live those numbers every day,” he says. “We’re not shocked by them.”

Though Hall says he has seen companies increase diversity when they set their minds to it, drawing a parallel to the recent corporate push for gender diversity at the board level. “All of a sudden last year, every single company on the TSX 60 has a woman on their board, right? Because they put their mind to it. But where were the women before? They were stuck in middle management, they were stuck at that glass ceiling, looking up.”

On June 10, Hall formed the Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism. The council’s membership is a who’s who of Canadian business, including CIBC CEO Victor Dodig, Cisco Canada president and CEO Rola Dagher, and Fairfax Financial Holdings CEO and chair Prem Watsa. It aims to ensure that businesses deliver on promises they’ve made to fight systemic racism and support the Black community.

The council’s BlackNorth Initiative, which will hold a summit on July 20, is urging CEOs to sign a pledge to remove systemic anti-Black barriers. Commitments include earmarking 3% of corporate donations and sponsorships to create economic opportunities in the Black community, ensuring that at least 3.5% of executives and board roles based in Canada are held by Black leaders, and hiring at least 5% of our student workforce from the Black community, all by 2025.

“We need to be uncomfortable and embrace the challenge to grow,” says BlackNorth Initiative co-chair Dagher. “It is absolutely time for us to stand up . . . A statement without a commitment is not anything at all.”

Broadening the recruitment pool 

While businesses are being called out for fumbling on diversity, public boards are making progress. Ryerson’s Diversity Institute says government-appointed boards – like those on publicly owned energy utilities, public transportation agencies and cultural institutions – boasted 63 Black board members out of a total 2,684 (2.35%). While the percentage is still small, it’s almost three times that of corporate boards.

That jump in diversity could be key to colour-correcting corporate Canada. Wendy Cukier, director of the Diversity Institute, says corporations often overlook talent found in public boards. She noted that non-profit boards often recruit candidates with corporate experience – but it’s not a two-way street. “There are lots of racialized people – and specifically Black people – who are lawyers, accountants and IT specialists that represent community organizations and could make significant contributions to corporate boards,” she says.

A study by Stacey R. Fitzsimmons, associate professor of international management at the University of Victoria, observed how often hiring happened through informal networks: 73% of Canadian board members reported that the most common method used to recruit board members involved recommendations by existing directors. Cukier says informal networks like these consist mainly of people with similar backgrounds, thus excluding qualified, diverse candidates.

“People tend to associate with people just like them, who belong to the same golf clubs,” says Cukier. Case in point: a 2014 study published by the Public Religion Research Institute, which found that 75% of white people in the U.S. have completely Caucasian social networks.

Some companies are now vowing to address this bias by changing how they hire. RBI reps say the company has “updated our search criteria for all senior positions to urge our recruiters to increase the diversity of candidates being forwarded,” adding that a steering committee of senior leaders is heading up its diversity and inclusion efforts.

Cukier says moves like this encourage budding Black leaders to envision themselves in leadership roles, which affects their aspirations and their access to mentorship.

The rewards of cultivating diverse leadership are well documented: a study by the management consultant firm McKinsey found that companies with more gender- or racially diverse executives were 33% more likely to have above-average profits. Those with diverse boards were 43% more likely to see above-average profits. Inclusively staffed companies enjoy broader talent pools, the ability to respond to a diverse set of markets, and reduced legal and reputational risk, researchers say.

But even when Black Canadians break into the boardroom, they still brave racism both overt and covert. Scarborough-Guildwood MPP Mitzie Hunter described how, after giving a speech for the Toronto-based technology incubator she was then the CEO of, a man told her she was the most “articulate Black person” he had ever heard.

“I’m pretty sure he thought he was giving me the highest compliment,” says Hunter. “Right in that moment, I stopped being the CEO . . . on a big stage representing my organization, and I became almost a little girl because of his words.”

Hunter says such comments can leave Black people feeling undermined and exhausted.

“That’s a waste,” says Hunter. “Your energy and your creativity and your talent and your thoughts and your ideas should be going into solving challenging problems that you’re there to do, rather than guarding yourself against this type of aggression.”

It’s also a wasted opportunity to reduce risk and group-think, says Cisco Canada’s Dagher, who fled Lebanon as a child.“You don’t want to hire people that look like you, that speak like you, that think like you; you want to hire people that can challenge you,” she says.

Regulating diversity 

Some diversity advocates question whether the recent corporate pledges can translate into real change. Canadian Senator Ratna Omidvar says that, while the recent response from corporations is encouraging, lasting change comes from regulation.

“What we have to rely on, then, is the law. It is the law that changes behaviours,” she says.

When it comes to long-standing efforts to improve gender diversity on boards, Senator Omidvar’s statement is largely backed up by empirical evidence, which shows that the countries that have made meaningful progress in increasing the number of women on boards all have legal targets or quotas driving that progress.

Canada’s legal system has only recently begun supporting corporate diversity. Introduced by Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Bill C-25 makes companies disclose or explain why they’re not creating plans to increase the number of women, racialized people, persons with disabilities and Indigenous citizens they hire in senior management and board positions. As of January 1, 2020, this applies to federally incorporated companies such as airlines and banks.

A growing number of companies, including Calgary-headquartered Cenovus Energy, now have formal board diversity targets. Cenovus says it has “an aspirational target to have at least 40% of independent directors be represented by women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities.”

Omidvar hoped that Bill C-25 would make such targets mandatory, but her amendment to the bill making this so was not approved by Parliament.

“I’d describe the government’s legislation as a tap on the shoulder of business to do the right thing, whereas I would have preferred a nudge,” Omidvar says.

The post How to colour-correct corporate Canada’s diversity problem appeared first on Corporate Knights.